Quitters referring smokers: a quitline chain-referral pilot study
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of Quantitative Health SciencesDocument Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2014-05-05Keywords
Community Health and Preventive MedicineHealth Services Research
Substance Abuse and Addiction
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BACKGROUND: Telephone counseling Quitlines can support smoking cessation, but are under-utilized. We explored the use of smoker peer-referrals to increase use of a Quitline in Mississippi and Alabama. FINDINGS: Collaborating with the Alabama and Mississippi Quitline, we piloted peer-referrals to Quitlines. Successful 'quitters' who had used the Quitline were contacted at routine follow-up and recruited to participate as a peer-referrer and refer their friends and family who smoked to the Quitline. Peer-referrers completed a training session, received a manual and a set of Quitline brochures a peer-referral forms. These peer-referral forms were then returned to the Quitline telephone counselors who proactively called the referred smokers. Of the initial potential pool of 96 who quit using the Quitline, 24 peer-referrers (75% Women, 29% African-American, and high school graduates/GED 67%) were recruited and initially agreed to participate as peer-referrers. Eleven of the 24 who initially agreed were trained, and of these 11, 4 (4%) actively referred 23 friends and family over 2 months. From these 23 new referrals, three intakes (100% Women, 66% African-American) were completed. Of the initial pool of 96, 4 (4%) actively participated in referring friends and family. Quitline staff and peer-referrers noted several barriers including: time-point in which potential peer-referrers were asked to participate, an 'overwhelming' referral form to use and limited ways to refer. CONCLUSIONS: Though 'quitters' were willing to agree to peer-refer, we received a minority of referrals. However, we identified several areas to improve this new method for increasing awareness and access to support systems like the Quitline for smokers who want to quit.Source
BMC Res Notes. 2014 May 5;7:282. doi: 10.1186/1756-0500-7-282. Link to article on publisher's siteDOI
10.1186/1756-0500-7-282Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/39625PubMed ID
24886693Related Resources
Link to Article in PubMedRights
© 2014 DeLaughter et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1186/1756-0500-7-282